Repeats and Borders on a knitting chart

I’ve received several requests to give some examples of using repeats in a chart. This post will cover the basics of doing that.

Let’s start with a lace chart created in Stitchmastery but with no Border or Repeat added;-

Lace chart with no Border or Repeat

Notice that when Stitchmastery generates the written instructions it looks for patterns in the text and does its best to condense any repeated portions of a row that it finds. So, for example, instead of writing;-

yo, ssk, yo, ssk

it writes;-

(yo, ssk) x 2

But what if we wanted the knitter to repeat the middle portion of the chart? Well we could add a nice big red Border to the chart to indicate that;-

Lace chart with Border but no Repeat

The red Border stands out and, with the edited key entry, is quite clear to the knitter following the chart that the middle portion must be worked 5 times. However, as the Border is only a visual element on the chart, the written instructions do not match the chart.

Once a Repeat has been added the chart looks the same but the written instructions now match the chart.

Lace chart with Border and Repeat

4 thoughts on “Repeats and Borders on a knitting chart”

  1. Howdy just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading correctly.
    I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different web browsers and both show the same outcome.

    1. Strange – I’ve just tried 3 different browsers and the images appear in all of them. Could you let us know what browsers you had the problem with?
      With thanks, Hannah (Social Media & Content Officer)

  2. If a pattern simply says “repeat” in the key next to the symbol of a red box, would you assume that that means to repeat it only once?

    Thank you!
    Cora

    1. Hopefully a pattern would give enough other info to help clarify that (eg stitch counts at the end of rows, if you had a chart that was 10 stitches wide but your knitting was 30 stitches wide, that would be a good hint that you’d have to repeat the section more than once). A designer might choose not to specify how many times in the key if it’s a pattern that grows in size and you have to repeat the section more times as the piece gets larger.

      Hope that helps!

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